At 103, Gurbachan Singh Bedi reflects on an active, involved and eventul life well lived
“When to depart, is none of one's own decision.
“God has written the life span, with precision.”
From Gurbachan Singh Bedi's poem, “Vision”
At the age of 103, having lived through most of two world wars and two pandemics along with seismic political events in his native India, Gurbachan Singh Bedi is sanguine about death.
“It's not in my hands,” he says. “I've lived this long only through God's grace.”
A Nepean resident, Bedi was presented earlier this year with the Mayor's City Builder Award for making Ottawa a better place through his three decades of volunteer work and community service. It was the culmination of an active, involved and eventful life.
“I'm of the habit of not sitting idle at any time,” Bedi says.
Born into the First World War on Sept. 26, 1917, Bedi grew up in the city of Lahore, in today's Pakistan. His father was a postmaster and the family enjoyed a comfortable existence in what was then the capital of British Punjab, a province in British India.
Bedi's life was turned upside down when his parents died while he was still in high school. He finished his exams and launched a business selling camera equipment and gramophones.
But the Second World War ruined his business — it was impossible to get new shipments — so Bedi enlisted in the British Army. He served during the war as a clerk and was still in Lahore when British Punjab was split between the new states of India and Pakistan in 1947.
The partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan led to the mass migration of more than 10 million people and widespread murder and other violence.
A Sikh, Bedi was forced to leave behind his home and property and flee Lahore on a train with his wife, Mohinder, to the new, independent India. “All we could do was save our lives,” says Bedi, whose uncle was killed during the partition's mayhem.
He joined the Indian Army and spent 20 years in military service while rebuilding his life and put
ting his three children through school. While stationed in Kashmir, he caught an orphaned panther cub and raised it for more than a year before surrendering the animal — he called her “Rani” — to a local zoo.
After retiring from the military, Bedi launched another career: He managed a business that imported and sold stainless steel cutlery. When that business was undercut by domestic production, he worked as a film distributor and theatre manager.
In October 1984, his life was upended again when then-prime minister of India Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for the government's raid on the Golden Temple, a Sikh shrine. The raid had been launched to capture Sikh separatists sheltering inside the temple.
Gandhi's assassination triggered murderous riots as Hindus indiscriminately targeted Sikhs for revenge. Bedi's daughter, Ottawa's Dr. Parvesh Bajaj, could not reach her parents during the violence that killed thousands of Sikhs. “For five days we could not get in touch with our parents,” she remembers. “We didn't know if they were alive or not.”
Rioters came to burn Bedi's house in Delhi, but neighbours managed to convince the mob that they had sold the house to a Hin
du family and moved. Bedi and his wife were secreted out of the house under blankets.
After the violence, Bajaj tried to convince her father to move to Canada. He agreed to stay in Ottawa only if he could secure a job. He was then 70 years old.
A family physician, Bajaj told one of her patients about her father's situation and he suggested that he apply for a job with the Commissionaires, a not-for-profit security company that employs thousands of veterans. Bedi went for an interview and began working as a commissionaire the next day.
He retired as a staff sergeant at the age of 90. “I thought that was quite a long time to work,” he says. “I said, `That's enough.'”
In Ottawa, Bedi also became deeply involved in his new community as a volunteer. He served as president of the Punjabi-Canadian Seniors Association, volunteered with Sikh Community Services of Ottawa and the Kanata Seniors' Centre and promoted dialogue between Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Muslims as part of an interfaith group.
In his spare time, he pursued passions for photography and poetry and painstakingly converted Sikhism's sacred text, the 1,430page Guru Granth Sahib, from Punjabi into digitized Urdu script.
Bedi's wife, Mohinder, died two years ago at the age of 99. They had been married for 80 years.
Bajaj says her father, a teetotaller and vegetarian, has always lived a disciplined life. “He's easygoing, but, at the same time, he's also a military type,” she says. “When we were growing up, there were lots of rules and regulations that we had to abide by.”
Bedi now wears a face mask with the slogan, “103 not out,” a reference to an exceptional at-bat in the sport of cricket and a commentary on his current place in life. He still walks every morning through his Arlington Woods neighbourhood, but is looking forward to the end of the pandemic. “I feel somewhat imprisoned,” he says.
He's easygoing but, at the same time, he's also a military type. When we were growing up, there were lots of rules and regulations ... to abide by.